Public Transport In Ghana

to the operators or owners by customers in order to be conveyed to their destinations while sustaining the operations of the transporting vehicle. This definition by Ubbels at al., (2001), will be used to refer to public transport throughout this research.

Brief history of Public Transport
A general historical overview of public transport is outlined from the perspective of Rodrigue et al., (2013). They intimate that urban transport can be categorized into collective, individual and freight transportation. In most instances, passengers and freight movements complement each other, however, they tend to be competing for passengers, the use of available land and other transport infrastructures at times.
The walking-horsecar era (1800–1890s):

Also, motorization and the spread of personal mobility is an ongoing trend linked with substantial declines in the share of public transit in urban movements. (Rodrigue et al., 2013).

Brief history of the development of public transport in Ghana
In Ghana, the modern public transportation system dates as far back as 1898 when the first rail line was constructed from Takoradi to Tarkwa for the commercial exploitation of gold, and the first road created between Accra Harbour (now Jamestown) and Dodowa to Larteh in 1905 for the export of palm fruits (Wilson, 2006). Another rail line was built linking Tarkwa with Prestea between 1908 and 1911 but these lines were built mainly in response to the demands from the mining sector at the time (Addo, 2006).
The informal sector has also operated and continues to operate transport services alongside the formal sector. Notable among the transport operators in the informal sector in the 1980s was King of Kings Ltd. Its bus operation, which was heavily patronized, was concentrated mainly on the Odorkor–Accra corridor (Wilson,

The rationale was to provide ‘labour and human carrier’ service to cater for the interest of trading and mining companies (Ojo et al., 2014). Through a Legislative Instrument (LI), on March 9th, 1965, the transport department was made a corporate body to run commercial passenger services and was named the State Transport Corporation. STC was later incorporated in June 1995 as a limited liability company under Ghana’s Companies Code 1963 (Act 179) under the name; State Transport Company Limited.
The company was tasked to consistently and profitably provide safe, comfortable and reliable road transport and allied service such as haulage. STC was responsible for the provision of inter-urban services, mainly between regional capitals, but also serving other large urban centres as well as some neighbouring cities within the ECOWAS region (Fouracre et al., 1994).
In 1996, STC was put on sale under a divestiture program, as part of Ghana’s overall Economic Recovery Program (ERP). However, Government of Ghana was unable to find any suitable buyer which caused its incessant decline as a result of lack of public investment in the rolling stock and other assets (IBIS,